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Friday, April 28, 2017

Many believe high school promotes the hive-like mentality, is geared towards the more sheepish of the population, and aggressively (if unintentionally) stands as an obstacle for the creative minds. Whether it’s because we like pretending our dysfunction is due to secretive genius, or to prove we really are creative and unique because we are dysfunctional, or simply a way of establishing that high school really was a waste of time, the thought that the educational system hurts the arts is popular and often repeated.

And though I would like to write about the numerous of teachers who tried to drown their brilliant students in the early years, I’m not here to discuss the things I always discuss or that I like to discuss, but want to discuss a different discussion all together.

Some years ago, I
entered into the real world and found myself face to face with a reality that academia
never prepared me for. I wrote down my feelings on the subject, and here I am
nearly ten years after graduation, ruminating over the difference of life
versus high school.

In high school…

When you don’t do
your work, you’re only hurting yourself.

Education is about
the learning process, so every action, project, and paperwork distributed is
all, in a way, pretend. If you don’t do your homework, you’re the one not
learning. You’re the one who won’t understand, who won’t get the grade, and
your teacher is just ecstatic they don’t have another insincere essay to read.
At worst, you’re working on a group project and your procrastination is
screwing over your fellow projecteers’ grades as well, which sounds bad, but it’s
not as bad as it could be because…

In the art world…

Everyone depends
on everyone.

It is rare for any
one artist to attribute his success to only himself. Whether it be producing a
play, writing a novel, or even living off painting, many people are involved to
bringing success to a project. Even a one man show requires help, whether it be
the light board operator, the set designer, the crew of the stage, or other
miscellaneous hands. A novelist depends on an editor, an agent, a publisher, a
cover designer, a bookstore manager, other businesses looking for ad revenue.
They need high school librarians to let them give a talk. Even the most self-sufficient
self-publisher needs a printer or social media app, Amazon or iBooks to
collaborate with them. Painters sell through galleries, have publicists, and
sometimes even assistants. There are occasions when a person could do it all
himself, but on the whole, the art world is a group effort.

High school
teaches the art student that making a deadline is only important for his success. Each student receives a
separate grade from each other, and when one backs out the others usually can
use that as an excuse for his end product. But in the art world, no one cares
why there is no music, they just know it sounds weird. They don’t care that the
advertiser didn’t meet his deadlines, they just don’t know about the show. It
doesn’t matter that it’s not the publisher’s fault the author doesn’t have a
book yet, he still can’t produce it. He’s still losing money.

Even Amazon, with
its massive number of indie authors will still be effected by unscrupulous work
practices of its suppliers.

Maybe our decisions
won’t impact the success of our partners greatly, but no matter what path you
take, people won’t be able to do their jobs if you don’t do yours.

In high school…

People will accept
late work.

Deadlines are
arbitrary to the teacher. She makes them based around well-spaced scheduling,
prioritizing what the student can and can’t do, and preferring for her
disciples to do the job rather than just blow it off. They offer a half-grade
in order to illustrate the importance of the deadline, but still convince
people to still try. And—here’s the important part—because teachers live in
this pretend world, resetting and relooping over and over, the student has
plenty of time to get the late work in. No one’s waiting on him, no one’s going
to move forward anyway. With the exception of the more strict educators, if he
can get it to her before she submits his grade, he’s golden. Sure, some
teachers don’t want the extra work of a late assignment, but I’ve met few who
can’t be talked into a more accepting attitude of your mistake.

But in the art
world…

Deadlines are
determined by necessity.

Because everyone
depends on everyone, often times, other people can’t start their job until the
first has finished. A lighting designer can’t do anything until the set has
been built. Advertisers can’t begin without knowing what the product is. An
editor can’t edit until the book’s been written.

If you’re the big
man in the department, the author of the novel, the painter of the masterpieces,
then deadlines are breakable—but only to a certain extent. Like a diva in a
film, producers can be lenient to the big stars, but even they have specific
limitations. For one thing, the artist’s reputation is on the line. But, more
importantly, there are often outside factors that can’t be controlled.

If a musician
doesn’t come out with a new CD while she’s still popular, she will soon be
forgotten. If the movie’s premiere keeps pushing back, the audience will lose
interest. Some deadlines are based off of events, such as auctions, or fads.
The artist needs to meet his deadlines for the people who are working with him,
for his fans, and to keep himself in the lime light.

More so, even,
artistic deadlines are worse than any other form because there is always more
that we can do. The writer can always make another draft. The artist can always
go back and fix that one little mistake. The producer can always advertise
more. It’s not just about finishing, it’s about making it good. People in the
arts always feel like there isn’t enough time, and it’s important not to be the
one they’re blaming.

In high school…

It’s about making
your teacher happy.

Often times your
teacher is the only person who will ever read your essay. The job is about the
doing of it and the grade from it, and it will probably never be used again.
Students know who their audience is and they can gauge the potential success of
their choices based on that one individual’s personal tastes and opinions.
Thus, decisions become easier to make.

Working in high
school looks like this: Teacher decides on project, tells you how long student
has to do it, student does it, turns in project, teacher decides if it was done
correctly or not.

But in the art
world…

It’s about making
someone happy, but no one knows who.

Some say it is
important to make yourself happy. Some say it is important to make whoever’s
paying you happy. Some say it’s important to make your readers happy. The
problem with that is, we don’t know who our audience is, we don’t know who’s going
to end up paying us half the time, and we don’t always know anything about
ourselves.

We’ve been trained
to try and do what was important for the grade. We had one person in mind and
that was that. There were plenty of choices to go against it—“I know my teacher
loves this book, but I still think it’s stupid.”—but even still the options
were obvious.

In the art world,
there are too many factors to count. First I could write for myself, but then
do I write the book that I would buy to seem smart, or the book that I would
hide behind a cover of A Clockwork Orange?
Do I write what I enjoy writing or do I write what I enjoy reading? I could
write it for whose paying me, but do I target it towards my agent, my editor,
or my publisher, most of whom I probably don’t know anything about yet? I could
write for an audience but then I’d have to choose which audience, and even when
I’ve done that, there’s still a lot more to keep in consideration. And if it’s
a mixture of all of the above, that’s even worse.

Working in the art
world looks like this: Author decides on a project. He decides how long he has
to do it. Author does it (allegedly). He turns in project. Someone rejects it
and doesn’t say why. So does another and another. Finally, someone takes it. He
makes his changes. Readers get book and hates changes/original. Book bombs,
can’t sell another.

Writers have to
depend on their own opinion and don’t get the luxury of having a boss to decide
how good they are.

In high school…

It’s better to do something challenging and be
mediocre than do something easy and be good.

I asked my acting
students what is a good actor and they say, “Someone who can play a lot of
characters.”

I said, “Okay.
Why?”

“Because it’s
challenging!”

“Why does the
audience care about the actor being challenged?”

High school
advisors always advise to take harder classes. It is better to get a B in an
honors class than an A in a regular class. Colleges are looking for the people
with ambition, not the ones seeking the easy route.

Academia is impressed
by risk takers, go getters, people who challenge themselves. We are taught from
a young age that it is important not to take the simpler path. It is about the
journey, not the destination.

But in the art
world…

It’s about the end
results.

Many abstract
artists have to explain their work for others to be impressed. It is not
apparent to the viewer how hard it is to draw a line. They need to go into
detail about the workload, otherwise people will be thinking, “My five-year-old
can do that.”

In this way, the
art world is like math. It doesn’t matter how you get there, as long as you
come up with the right answers.

If an artist
challenges himself for the fun of it, that’s fine. If he likes the harder way
better, then that’s how he should do it. But the inspiration he gives his fans
will not change just because he went the hard route. Good artists make whatever
they’re doing look easy. Sure, some audience members will be impressed by
impossible looking things, but usually if they’re noticing how hard it must be
the creator isn’t doing it well.

It doesn’t matter
why the artist failed, it matters that he failed. The student challenges
himself, the artist does what works.

In high school…

The people are
there to make you do your work.

Because of that
whole “mandatory education” thing, high schools aren’t very selective. It is
not competitive so it is better if everyone does a good job. We expect children
not wanting to do their work, and we also realize that many people don’t really
see the reward in doing hypothetical activities. So most of academia is set up
to force everyone to be productive.

But in the art
world…

Everyone wants you
to do less than them.

Even when not in
the same field, people are trying to outdo their peers. The more “talented” the
world considers you, the more sway you have. Therefore, the light designer is
competing with the actor, the actor is competing with the director, and every
time someone is an overachiever it makes the rest of us have to work harder. Therefore,
no one is going to push you to go above and beyond unless they have direct
reward from it. Or think you’re far enough beneath them that it doesn’t matter.

And, it’s a job,
so the producer/publisher/agent will assess if an author’s worth the work every
time they have to nag him. It is more likely that a person will get fired/not
picked up again before he is pushed.

But that’s when
he’s already successful. Many times there won’t be a job until after the work
is done, after the painting is done, the novel is finished, the music is
written. That means that no one cares if you finish at all. It doesn’t bother
anyone else if your novel never gets made. They don’t need you to be a writer,
they have plenty.

Unlike in high
school, there is no one to tell you how to do it, the deadlines, or lecture you
when the work isn’t finished.

In high school…

The path is cut
and dry.

We have a few
options, such as electives and what subject matter our essay is on, but there
was always advice and where to go and what to do, and in order to deviate from
that a student was required to a lot of extra effort. And even still, by means
of having a specific direction to go, it gives an option when choosing not to
follow it. If you stand still, you’ll still be pushed forward. Someone else
will has already made a good number of decisions for you.

But in the art
world…

The choices are
unlimited.

There are a
thousand different options and they all could work in one context and all could
fail in a different occasion. Whereas you know exactly what needs to be done to
get into college, when attempting to become a successful artist, it’s hard to
separate what is useful work from busy work.

We know if we do
our homework we will get a good grade and that will help getting into college.
But we don’t know which idea for a novel is the best one, which will sell the
best, which agent is the best to send the idea to, which agent will be most
likely to open up most connections, or even if the book will come out the way
we planned it. Is it better to make some short stories to help get published,
or is it a better use of time to go straight to the big picture? Is writing
this porn script going to count as a resume credit, or is it going to
delegitimize my experience?

Art students often
talk about the surprise when all of the sudden they had no direction before
them. Right out of college, the path is no longer clear, and we don’t really
know how to make one. And even when having some idea about the next step, it is
never certain whether or not it is the right step or that it will get anywhere.

7. In high school…

If you do what’s
expected of you, you can’t fail.

The student turns
in his homework, he comes to class, he writes the essay, and he tells the
teacher what she wants to hear. Even if he does all of those things badly, he
will still pass the class. Some people are made to always go above and beyond
the call of duty, but for the rest of us the knowledge that as long as we
achieve the bare minimum we’ll be fine is a nice safety net.

But in the art
world…

Your failure is
often out of your hands.

A person could flop
for any single reason, and often for very stupid, blameless, and inane ones. No
one bought the book because no one heard about it, because the cover was ugly,
because it had a word in the name that was in vogue at the time and therefore
was ignored as one of the masses, it is compared to a terrible story, or there
was a typo on the first page.

On that grounds,
however, a person can also succeed for very stupid and inane reasons.

Artists often
comment about how success is about luck, and to a certain measure, it’s true. Unlike
high school, because no one is telling you exactly what needs to be done, and
it is on the artist to make himself do his work, we can’t depend on just doing
what we’re told. We have to make decisions and commit to them. High school has
never prepares people for that.

In high school…

People can
determine the importance of an assignment and put in a respective level of
energy.

Teachers are
notorious for assigning busy work. By the nature of bureaucracy, the professors
are often required to give a specific amount of essays out, a specific amount
of homework out, and demand that the kids stay in class for the allotted time.
So they give out work to literally keep the children busy.

Thus we learn that
there are some assignments that we can blow off, half ass, or speed through and
there is some work that we should try harder on.

But in the art
world…

When you produce crap,
you produce crap, no matter how big or small.

Not all projects
are created equal. Some jobs are small (30 seconds of transition music for a
community theatre) and some are big (a world tour), and the number of people
watching changes. Therefore, it looks as though it is okay to not work as hard
for the smaller events because the reward isn’t worth it.

But hiring is
based on your reputation. Small jobs often get the bigger jobs, so when an
artist produces a heap of half-assed work, or no work at all, it affects them.
Grades “reset” every semester, and though the GPA is an accumulation, it is
still number based which reputation isn’t. Which means that if I produce a
project worth an A, a C, and then one F, I have a C average. But when someone
watches me produce a terrible play then a great one, then a mediocre one, I
will be considered a terrible playwright.

Most importantly,
in high school, projects constantly come your way no matter how well or poorly
you did on the last, where in the art world, do too terribly and the projects
will stop coming all together.

In high school…

People are
impressed by potential.

Seeing a third
grader write a novel is impressive, even if it is painful to read. A student’s
drawing of their own face that looks like them will get compliments, even if
with the crossed eyes and asymmetrical features. In high school, you’re
talented if you’re better than just expected.

But in the art
world…

People expect you
to be the best from the jump.

An agent has to
pick a new book to represent. The resume of one man is seventeen unpublished
novels. The resume of another is one published novel. The agent will pick the
later because, while it is impressive that someone could write that many, they
might all be terrible. He only has the potential to be a good author, while the
second has (allegedly) written well enough for someone else to invest in his
work.

For a high school
student to be impressive, it only requires hard work. For an artist to be
impressive, it requires success. High school teaches us that if we want to show
off, we only need to put in effort. In “the real world,” however, opportunities
exist for the results, not for the sake of opportunity. Things made for teens
are only there so that the teens can have a chance to learn something, things
made for adults are there to build a profit, reputation, or some other reward.
It doesn’t matter if you have potential, they need to be certain you can do the
job.

In high school…

You’re only
competing with people in your age group.

All contests, most
classes, and the majority of tests are oriented around the student’s age. We
take classes with fellow seniors, are separated during events and often social
settings, and all competitions are attempted to be made fair by cutting out the competition.

But in the art
world…

We need to be
better than people three times older than us. Age is a funny thing because
before you’re 30 you’re too young to do art, and after you’re thirty, you’re
too old. However, with the few exceptions like, say, acting, an artist’s competition
can be anyone. What’s more is that we can’t expect the aged ones to necessarily
be better than the young ones.

High school forces
a broad spectrum of experience onto its students, but after graduation day,
that outside power stops. A person may not write for 40 years and his abilities
hasn’t changed since he stopped. Or he may have been writing for 40 years and
those who have been working for two are going to have to still try and be
better if they want to get noticed.

Ageism is
something that high school doesn’t prepare you for. We learn that the older
someone is the more authority someone has. We don’t foresee how we will have to
soon enter into the peer group and soon start to compete with not only people
older than us, but people younger than us.

We will be up
against people with a lot more experience than us, with bosses who want to be
more experienced than us, and with a much wider variety of peers than we’ve
ever had before.

High school tries
to prepare us for the future, but in its attempts to make us reach our
potential, force us to be the best we can be, show us the path, and encourage
our abilities, it doesn’t discuss the world that attempts to stop our potential
before it can become talent, that isn’t made to give us opportunity or success,
and competes with us in every way imaginable.

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Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Last week I typed the final words to the first
draft of The Former Self. At 105,000
words, the fantasy novel took four years and a lot of sidetracking to be
finished.

The manuscript started as a National Novel Writing
Month in November 2013, haphazardly named The
Clone as a working title. I “won” that year, finishing November with the
first 50,000 words. I wasn’t doing well, honestly. I found 2012 to be much more
productive, having gotten down the first 60,000 words of The Dying Breed (a manuscript that would become 180,000 words over
the course of five months) in twenty days.

I graduated from college in January ’12, and found
my writing slowing way down. Back in high school, I was successfully writing
almost every day, finishing four novels my senior year. I had some plays and
short stories done during my university days, but not a lot.

The Dying
Breed started for the Writing Month, coming out easily compared to anything
else I’d written. (Funnily enough, most of those first 60,000 words that were
so obvious to me did not survive the later cuts.) I started working on The Dying Breed seriously for
publication for the first time, something that I finally acted on this January
after years of edits.

The Former
Self was my next attempt. I started stories and wrote a little, but a lot
of my time was taken up in theatre. I didn’t finish anything, nothing came as
easily or as naturally as before. In November, I again picked up my pen and
kept up with the quota demanded of me by an internet graph.

For several years, National Novel Writing Month
was the only time I really got any work done. I have pulsed through the first
50,000—though painfully, but never finished any until last year I finally
managed to put the finishing touches on the first draft of The Vicarious Saving of the World.

Summed up, I started The Dying Breed in November 2012, The Former Self in November 2013, and I believe the Vicarious Saving of the World in
December 2013, drawing my attention away from The Former Self until I
finished it in 2016. In the meantime, I wrote numerous other books, many for
the Writing Month, but didn’t finish any.

I had been hoping for a while to get back to my
prolific writing style, but have been unable to do so. I blame depression and a
lack of enthusiasm for life; 2014-2015 was a terrible time in my life.

Recently though, I’ve been getting ahead. On my web comics, on my Stories of the Wyrd, on my blogs.
On the same day I finished my book, I also finalized a quilt top, and got five
comics ready for scanning, as well as worked on my painting for a long-term
project, Making the Horizon.

Do I like working on these projects all at once?
Somewhat. Not entirely. I find that the long duration of writing a book sucks
out some of its inspiration. There’s also a natural continuity that is
encouraged when you remember what you’re doing. When you take so long to finish
a book, you don’t remember what you were going for, what you’ve done, or even
hold the same inspiration for it.

So why do some stories need to be finished while
others don’t? In honesty, it is tempting for many authors to always start
something new rather than continue to work on the old. I personally recommend
trying to stick with a manuscript until you finish it, and prefer the results
of having my head in one game.

On the other hand, switching back and forth can
also increase motivation. It is easier to write five pages in five books than
five in one. When you get stuck, you can switch over. When you get inspired,
you don’t have to.

But why did The
Former Self beat out all of the others I have open? What about it made it
need finishing? Well, for one thing, size does matter. The closer to the end
something is, the more likely I am to prioritize it. Finishing a first draft
feels good. You’ve accomplished something!
And it’s something that you can accomplish
on your own accord. Unlike all the other hurdles (getting picked up by an agent,
getting published, getting lots of sales, getting awards), it’s something you
can achieve by sheer will alone.

But The
Former Self also has a beginning that keeps me reading for the first 20 pages,
even if I’m supposed to be writing. The concept, unlike most of my other books,
is decently pitch worthy, more easy to sum up. It was one of the three books I
cared about, for whatever reason, but it had the most marketability.

A young merchant girl comes to find that the man
she loves is actually nothing more than a supernatural shadow, created by the aristocrat
known as the Coffin Prince.

I’m not too fantastic at my pitching or blurbs,
nor am I inspired with the one above. In fact, I don’t have any attempts at a
query letter or any sort of sales pitch going. I just know that it has more of
a concept than either The Vicarious
Saving of the World or The Dying
Breed.

As of right now, I’m not too satisfied with it
either. It comes off as too young adult for me—a style I’m trying to get away
from. There’s a traveling scene—a conflict I’m trying to get away from, and
some places in which I need to bring it way down while others I need to pump it
way up. To make it more adultish, I need to add to the sexual tension, but surprisingly,
I want to take away some of the violence. The Coffin Prince (whose name came up
recently and I’m not sure I’m too thrilled with, depending on the direction I
want to go) actually, I think, needs to be less cold blooded. Though the
antagonist, I believe it would serve that instead of massacring his copies in
murderous ways, he actually absorbs them back into his blade, making it clear
why he doesn’t see it as murder, but still painting a terrifying picture as
their clothes and metal bones are left behind.

The nice thing about working on several books at
one time is that it’s not as hard to transition to the next one. Usually there
is a lag between them, and I’m not always inspired to write something the
moment I finish with something else. It’s not as clean cut as that.

But looking through my works and how far along
they are, I’ve decided to continue the next in line—the one that will be
easiest to finish.

The Song
Bird’s Lie (working title) had been started several months before The Dying Breed. I believe I had begun
it after Silver Diggers, the
manuscript that Stories of the Wyrd
is based on, still in my one manuscript at a time stage. I stopped midway
through because of the intense inspiration I had and the good timing of the
Writing Month coming up, planning on picking it back up afterwards. I didn’t. I
worked on it, of course, even making a detailed outline of 100 pages of what
would happen. It still lacks an ending, but I have a summation of events picked
out for me. At 55,000 words and everything that’s going to happen, I think it’ll
be actually pretty easy to get it done soon.

If I was diligent (ha) and loyal, I could
theoretically finish it at 90,000 words within two weeks’ time.

But no. I’m still working on The Plane(slowly but surely) like I said I would, am filling
up my portfolio of Stories of the Wyrdto make my life easier in the future, plus know that my big project of Making the Horizon, needs to be
worked on piece by piece, otherwise I’d be committing solely to it for the next
decade, and that’s not going to happen.

My ambition seems to getting ahead of me, but I
actually look at all the little bit I’ve moved forward—inch by inch, piece by
piece—has progressed me towards something. I’m not as far behind as I thought.
I’m pretty happy, even though I know Former
Self is going to take some work to get it up there.

Right now I’m focusing my editing on Vicarious in hopes to get it ready for
submission much faster than I did with The
Dying Breed. Editing always takes a backburner, so does publishing for that
matter, and I think it’s time to prioritize it. I might be okay with writing a
bunch of different things, but I’m trying to zero in my focus.

So, you’re probably not going to be reading this
any time soon. I am actively looking for readers and critique partners however.
If you’re interested in traded manuscripts, giving me feedback, or just telling
me how you responded, send me an email at info.daveler@gmail.com and we can see
what we can do.

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Monday, April 24, 2017

There’s a continuity to
them, a meaning; everything you did you did for a reason. It might be a stupid
reason, like you were just really tired and phonetically spelt out learn as
luren (true story), or it might be that your subconscious knows something you
don’t.

Even great advice, when
misunderstood, won’t be any good to you. To implement something correctly the nuances
of it huge factors in its success. It is so important not to make a generic,
homogenized work, (It wasn’t even bad enough to be good!) which is what will
happen if you take every piece of advice you get. Remember, people often
comment on the different more than what’s important, and sometimes, different
is exactly what you want.

And sometimes it isn’t. So
how do you know when to take it and when not?

Do you see it?

It’s not about whether or
not you agree; it’s about if you understand where they’re coming from.

Say someone tells you you overuse adverbs. When you look at your work, you
really don’t think you used very many. In fact, you just don’t see any that you
used at all.
1. Reputation. We all know that person who says they love Kafka to sound
intelligent. This person is prone to deceiving others about what they like and
don’t like in literature. “Name dropping” in critiques (a tactic I can’t
stand), is where they’ll say, “Oh, you should read A Clockwork Orange,” simply because it makes them seem well read,
not because it has anything to do with you.
While this person is secretly reading Fifty
Shades and you couldn’t force to see a staged reading of The Old Man and the Sea, they’re still
giving out Hemingway rules of writing; they’re pretending that things that don’t
work for them do while incorrectly begrudging pieces that were successful.
I didn’t simplify all my prose, I simplified the important and extra wordy
sentences. I didn’t explain everything, just added in a little more detail here
and there. I made one scene from another character’s point of view, but left
others the same.

Admit this. It’s hard,
partially because people are so terrified of looking like the asshat who can’t
take criticism, but not saying what you really think will prevent further
communication, and the truth is there’s a reason you can’t see it and further
conversation will help you find that reason.

This has happened to me
probably about six times in the past. Someone would say something—“You need to
set up the scene more.”—and I felt strongly that I didn’t need to, that I had
done whatever they said I messed up on fantastically.

So I explained to them
what I thought. “I believed I had set up the hut really well. I thought it was
vivid and grounded, you could see where you were…”

Every single time, every time, there had been a
miscommunication: “Oh, no. You set up the hut perfect. I was talking about the
world. Like are we in outer space?”

Or, more often, “I was
complimenting you, you idiot.”

If you don’t think their
perception on your book is true, it’s likely because how you’re interpreting it
isn’t what they mean. It might be that you saw the word “scene” as different
than the scene they were talking about, or it might be that they misspoke. You
don’t really have a lot of adverbs,
but when you do use them, they’re noticeable.

If you don’t see what
they’re talking about as being true, you can’t really move on from there. If
you do get where they’re coming from, it still might not mean they’re entirely
correct (it’s possible they just have a petpeeve about adverbs), but you’re at
least starting from the same base.

Do they believe what they’re
saying?

Start with the philosophy
that no one is stupid. Their opinions have some validity, but the context in
which it is valid might not be the context in which you’re working in. Under
this belief, the only time someone is outright “wrong” becomes when they
themselves don’t even believe what they’re saying. No one is stupid, but there
are liars.

Why would someone lie
about that?

Usually an immaculate lie
is rare. Generally speaking, if, say, I had a vendetta against you and wanted
your book to suck, I could find something that truly did bother me and blow it
out of proportion. I’d be lying about the magnitude of the problem, but there’s
still some honesty to what I’m saying.

There are three common
motivations for a person might lie which you should listen for:

Sometimes, people lie
about what you need to fix simply to sound informed. It can manifest in many
ways and can often be hard to catch. You should look for hypocrisy and
inconsistency. They love Shakespeare but hate when you toy with words. They say
you use too many adverbs and yet theirs is riddled with it. It’s not an end
all, but you’ll start to catch some patterns in their contradictions and know
it’s not just a simple mistake.

2. To segue. Similar to
reputation, but slightly different, people will often use the topic at hand to
jump onto the topic they really want to talk about.

So while Joe is
complaining about your over use of passive-sentences, Susie hears the phrase
passive-sentences, and she’ll immediately jump on it, going, “Yes, Stephen King
once told me my book was fantastic except I overuse passive-sentences.”

While it sounds like she’s
agreeing with Joe’s assessment of your writing, but what she’s really saying
is, “I once talked to Stephen King and he likes my book.”

3. The Emperor’s New
Clothes. Obviously the individual is afraid of looking stupid or disagreeing
with either the crowd or a more intense/experienced member of the group. They
avoid saying what they really think for fear of being judged or making
themselves a target, so they say nothing, implicating they agree when really
they don’t. Or worse, they’ll actively agree with the powerhouse to get on his
side.

Look for inconsistency in
behavior. Most groups have one member who the others are afraid of. (It might
be you.) If someone never talks, it probably means nothing, but if a chatty
Kathy shuts up when Mr. Snuffy is speaking, don’t take her silence as
agreement. In fact, silence is rarely agreement. It’s either disinterest,
shyness, or passiveness.

There are reasons to lie,
and if you are suspicious a person is lying to you, then it’s a good sign that
you shouldn’t put the work before them.

But, more importantly, if
you get the feeling that they truly believe what they’re saying, that’s who you should listen to, no
matter their experience level.

What is the problem they’re
trying to solve?

The biggest reason
constructive criticism gets confusing is that people talk in solutions, not in
problems.

A solution is an action
you can take, (or an implication of an action), whereas a problem is the effect
your book had on them. I define “bad” writing as when the reader as a reaction
he doesn’t think he was supposed to have.

Going off of that, first
and foremost there are five common reactions people often don’t want to
experience:

-Boredom.

-Confusion.

-Meaningless.

-Condescension.

-Being jarred out of the
story.

Boring and confusing are
obvious. No one ever thinks they’re supposed to be bored, and usually people
don’t think they’re supposed to be confused. When a book rambles on and on and
sounds like it’s just talking for the sake of talking, not only is it boring,
but it feels like the author is deliberately wasting your time. A meaningless
book is one that ends with you going, “So what?” Condescending books are ones
that insult the reader, and jarring passages are where you are distracted from
what is important, brought back to the real world, and forced to think about
the writer and what he’s trying to do. Immersion is ruined.

The problem is far more
important than the solution for a lot of reasons.

One, the solution could
solve myriad of different issues, but if you try to solve the wrong one, it
won’t be implemented correctly. For instance, they say you have “Too many
characters.” Well, for starters, you can tell this is a solution, not a
problem, because of the quantifier. A problem is a problem no matter the
magnitude. Having too many characters is very different from having too few
characters or even just having characters. But being too boring and being
boring is exactly the same thing, where as not being boring enough doesn’t make
sense. Solutions have contexts, problems rarely do.

So let’s argue that the
reader was bored because you went off on all these tangents about characters he
didn’t care about. When he says you have, “Too many characters,” however, you
hear that he was confused, not able to keep track of them all.

You go through your
manuscript and cut and merge characters that are forgettable, making everything
about the main five. It’s possible you cut the most boring characters, but it’s
also extremely possible that you didn’t touch the offending issues at all. You
needlessly cut and merged all these characters (often adding to subtle
continuity slip ups, like calling someone by the wrong name which hasn’t come
up in the story before or after), and people are still bored.

Two, as Neil Gaiman says, “When
people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost
always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to
fix it, they are almost always wrong.”

I say you can always use
any piece of criticism given honestly. But it requires you to take it apart,
find the root of the idea, then understand the context, and through that you
will find something useful. Sometimes the benefit isn’t worth it, but it’s a
required process for a lot of feedback.

You might use the advice
without using the solution. It might not be the best solution to their problem,
it might not be a solution you want to take at all. You have the right and
ability to make any of your choices work, but you have to figure out what’s not
working first.

When you understand the
problem (“I was bored by most of the characters storylines.”) You don’t have to
take their actual suggestion (“Cut them.”) but can still fix the issue. And
you’ll probably be your most creative. (“Go through and make the storylines
have higher stakes, more in-depth characters, find some moments for the readers
to become empathetic to them.”)

Sometimes you might
realize it’s not worth the work, but at least there’s the option there.

Three, most problems won’t
be solved by one solution.

On the first book I really
got a lot of different eyes on, I found little consistency in their responses.
One person would say to “Simplify everything,” the next only said to change the
point of view. Someone else asked for more description. When they pointed out
words they didn’t like they were never the same ones. I gave three chapters to
over twenty different people and the only thing they had in common was three of
them didn’t like, “He clamped his mouth shut.” (“With what?” they said.)

For several months I found
myself frustrated and mixed-up, but at the end what worked was when I started
to find the common denominator—they were confused—and the solution was just
doing a little bit of what everyone said.

People will try to give
you a blanket solution that wouldn’t have solved the problem on its own, and,
implemented too strongly, would cause even more issues.

It was my understanding of
the feedback that enabled me to work effectively and efficiently.

Four, you might not give a
shit. Pardon my French.

For my senior thesis in
college I wrote a play called, Molly Aire
and Becca Ette Do Theatre. The very first thing my professor said to me
was, “You need to clarify they are not lesbians.”

The plot was very Mystery
Science Theatre 3000, old guys from the Muppets style. Two girls at a play,
making fun of it. Nothing homoerotic about it.

This might have frustrated
me if I hadn’t heard it before. Truth is, you write about women, everyone wants
to know who they’re having sex with. If there are no men around they must be
having sex with each other. Someone has made this comment on three of my plays
before. I mean, it’s possible that I am unconsciously having lesbianonic
overtones, but I can’t deny the literature in which it is being compared to.

I told him that trying to
prove someone’s assumptions untrue always just made them question it further,
that going into these girls’ sex lives was not relevant to the storyline, and
finally, if a director wanted to take it that way, then I was fine with that.
Okay, it’s a date. Directors love making characters gay anyway.

My professor was the sort
of personality type to back down, immediately, so the subject was dropped. Over
the course of the semester, he kept giving me strange feedback that I didn’t
really understand, like “Add in a third character,” and “Talk about their
external life more.”

Adding in a third
character would mean a complete rewrite. Because the two only speak to each
other and had very different personalities and a dynamic (that I thought was
the most successful part of the work) that would have to change with a third
person involved, it seemed like a lot of work for what I thought was just him
trying to add his two-cents.

I had forgotten about the
conversation at the beginning of the semester, and so it wasn’t until the end
that I started to connect the dots. Every suggestion he made could be tied
directly into proving it was not a date.

The problem, to him, was
that they might be lesbians and he thought they weren’t supposed to be. This
was not a problem I cared about, and the effort required for his suggestions
really made it all the less appealing.

Sometimes you won’t know
if you agree with a criticism until after you truly understand it.

If you don’t understand,
stick a pin in it.

Don’t try to take advice
one piece at a time. Details make up the big picture, but it’s still about the
big picture in the end. If the forest looks fantastic then there’s no reason to
freak out over a misplaced leaf. Especially because quality of creative writing
isn’t linear, and so that mistake might be exactly what makes the picture look
real.

If you thought about a
piece of advice—even if you feel like something’s there and you just can’t
figure out what it is—don’t worry about it. Set it aside. If it’s important, it
will come up again later. If it’s not, you’ll forget and move on to more
important things.

Fixating on something can
warp your view on it. It’s like saying the same word over and over again; it
loses its meaning. If you start focusing on every adverb you use, you’ll stop
hearing the cadence of the whole sentence. It is important to let things go.

How do you know it’s pride
or your gut?

Saving the biggest issue
for last, when we are most fraught with taking a piece of criticism, it has to
do with our ego. Mainly that we don’t know if it’s our ego or not.

Someone implies you did
something wrong, an innate part of you balks. It’s our nature to want to be
right. But a big part of you wants to create the best work possible, and you’re
willing to push your ego aside if that’s what it takes. Yet, on the other hand,
their advice seems wrong, somehow. Your gut is rejecting it. How do you know
it’s you’re instinct or just your need to be right?

The best way,
unfortunately, is to be wrong. A lot. The more you are wrong, the faster you
will recognize when you really are right.

Unless you’re planning on
self-publishing tomorrow (which if you’re having an internal conflict, you
might want to wait a couple of months, otherwise you’ll get the truth from the
public.) then there’s nothing wrong with being wrong. Don’t be disrespectful,
you don’t need to announce you’re not taking their advice, but you should stick
with your gut. Either it is your pride, and you will become more accustomed to
telling the difference, or it is your gut, and you’ll have made the right
decision.

Sometimes it’ll just be
the person telling you. Someone more respectful might be better apt to convince
you. Sometimes it’ll just be the shock of hearing something you didn’t expect
and letting it die down for a while will make it easier to swallow. Sometimes
you need to do more research, and sometimes you just need to figure it out for
yourself.

Most problems aren’t
severe enough to destroy your story. There are often a lot of solutions,
flexible perspectives, and enough context in your book that allowing a few
mistakes to survive through a few more beta-readers and editors and an agent
isn’t an issue.

Friday, April 21, 2017

You don’t think you’d have to suggest this to a group of writers, and yet I unfollowed a blog for the first time this week because of the writer’s adamant declarations about what is acceptable in writing. After a few times, I couldn’t even begin to read her articles without getting peeved about her outlook. In that vein, you should know that I am, in fact, pissed off, at the moment. And, as I told my ex-boyfriend, I’m mad, but I’m not mad at you. I’m gonna rant here, don’t take it personally.

Her advice was cliché, lacking personal response or addition to rules already parroted by numerous of other authors who often rarely followed the ideas themselves. Learn the rules to learn to break them, as they say.

As someone who had a hard time following orders but has been writing long enough that eventually, statistically, I’ve had to do what I was told, I could tell you all kinds of anecdotes when following the rules led to my success just as much as I could regale you on the times they’ve screwed me over. So, from my perspective, anyone who listens to their own advice and practices it accordingly should have a similar series of personal insights about context.

Writing is not about getting permission. It’s not about doing things the “right” way. It’s not a science, and that makes it all the more important that people filter in other’s opinions and then analyze them. It’s perfectly understandable and useful to wonder how a decision will be received by readers, but it’s a whole other matter when you start asking, “Am I allowed to…?”

If you were to follow the rules, you would be playing it safe, be homogenized, and be ridiculously limited, and you wouldn’t necessarily be writing anything that anyone cares about. That does not mean they’re not useful at times.

The internet does not need another blog telling us that “using said” is the best way to fix dialogue. It isn’t. Stop fixating on easy solutions and start going a little deeper. Writing is about illustrating a new perception on God-aged ideas and experiences, so why, when you are a writer writing about writing, are you saying something that is older than God?

Writing advice is like the straw that broke the camel’s back. Camel’s back got broken. What happened just before it broke? You put a straw on it. So don’t put straws on camels’ backs, obviously. And even if I don’t know the camel’s back got broken, someone I highly respected told me not to do it, and so, when giving advice out to others, I am going to give you the opinion that “matters.” Not my own, because theirs must be better than mine; they’re famous after all! So I’ll repeat the idea that I don’t really understand because it came from a source I trust and am completely unable to put it into context.

The important part is, of course, that the camel’s back got broken at all, and if I’m asking for a quick solution off the top of your head and that’s what you come up with, that’s reasonable. But if you’re repeating the advice for something you’ve allegedly being doing for twenty years, then I have to severely question how much you’ve actually been thinking during that time.

A real expert would be able to say, “I too have broken the camel’s back. If you remove the straw, this is what will happen. If you move the 90 pound statue, this is what would happen. Here’s why I recommend this option…”

Overuse of the word said, overuse of synonyms for said, are the surface level projection of a deeper problem. What is that problem? Finding that problem over just using a simple trick to lessen the problem will solve your issues in one sweep. Putting “cover-up” over a few obvious words will… well, look like you did what you did.

My first advice to someone struggling with dialogue will never be about the tags. The tags are a separate issue all together, usually stemming from lack of variation in general, or—more often—come from someone having said, “Never use said,” or “Always use said.” The writer, focusing on it, makes it unnatural, and thereby noticeable.

My first advice to someone trying to be a better writer is not about adverbs. Adverbs are the symptom of a larger problem. If the larger problem does not exist than the adverbs aren’t a problem.

My first advice would not about deleting semicolons. It might be a part of a laundry list on how they act pretentiously or they jar me over and over, but an excellent writer who I trust will gain my acceptance of the strange device over time. If semicolons really are the biggest issue, we've gotten to the stage where the book is fantastic and now we're just polishing. But if you hate the character and have questions about gaping plot holes, talking about those issues trump the easy fixes.

If I were trying to edit a book for someone, I wouldn’t be discussing word choice. Not at the early stages. I’d focus on the largest problem—This is why I wasn’t in love with it. The issue with this tactic, however, is it requires authors to think for themselves. But, if you want to be a writer, you’re going to have to do anyway. Yes, it’s easier for me as a teacher to go through and say, “Change this word and this word and this word,” but it’s more effective for me to say, “If you want this result then look for these influences.”

Here’s my writing advice: Intention, intention, intention. And variation. That’s it. Vague, no? Yes. That's the problem. Critical thinking is complex. It's hard to teach. There's no real quippy phrases to clarify how to do it. You learn from experience. But those experiences can be taught, discussed, and learned from, which is why it's so important to go into them instead of summing up a overly simplified solution.

When is it bad to only use said? When it looks like you’re trying to only use said. When is it bad to not use said? When it looks like you’re trying not to use said. When it looks like you don’t actually know what the word means. When it looks like you couldn’t find a better fit. When it looks too much like you’re trying to be Hemingway without understanding him. Or when you’re doing one or the other too much, when it looks like you don’t know any other way to say it, or are too lazy to figure it out.

What does too much look like? How do you know what intention your readers are seeing? Well that’s up for the writer to decide. He has to think about it. But I know that most people can do it. And if they can’t, if they are incapable of thinking for themselves, then they have bigger problems.

It’s hard, but analyzing the complexity of the real issue of “why” will end up being far truer, far more effective, then “don’t.”

I know some people believe that adverbs are the devil’s work, and they have every right to believe that. But if you only believe it because someone said so, if you haven’t tried it out, or have, but never paid attention to the results, you’re not an expert. It is damaging for someone to push an untested theory onto fresh minds without reminding them of alternative opinions and options.

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